“Yeah,” Gray nodded. “That’s what those New York doctors don’t seem to know, that’s why I hotfooted it back here. Lord,” he said, stretching his back, “I been doing some hard traveling. Just to see you. I’m glad nobody’s birthing tonight. Because when I’m done talking. I’m going back again faster than I came, if I can. You see. Doc, I’ve got this friend who’s got a problem…”
“Tell him applications of mercury will do it, but it hurts like hell,” the doctor said abruptly, “and to stay away from that kind of woman in the future. I’msurprised at you Gray, you ought to know better by now. Didn’t Josh and me tell you often enough? Wash first, and right after, and take a good look at more than her shape before you do anything in between,” the doctor chided him before he took another long pull at his glass.
“No, it’s not that,” Gray said. “Nice things you think of me! It’s not that I’m too smart not to be careless, but I’m smart enough not to let you know if I was,” he laughed, and took a swallow from his own glass before he said, “Lord! That’s good. But it’s not what you’re drinking is it? I know, you see. You’re still drinking sarsaparilla and making faces like it was rotgut, aren’t you? More than language can be a barrier when you’re trying to get to know folks, right? Don’t glower at me. Doc, I stole a sip from your glass when you turned your back from setting my leg that time. That first time, when I was a tad,” he added, as the doctor grinned.
“Well, don’t let it get around,” the older man said, “though I expect most folks know it by now. They’re just being polite. I got my public image to maintain. If I drank as much as I seem to. I’d be riding on calls underneath my buggy, don’t you know.”
They chuckled, and rocked in silence for a few minutes, before the doctor said softly, “Out with it Gray, never know when some fool woman will take it into her head to start pushing out a baby. I got two ready to pop, but I want to hear what brought you home. Must be something important.”
“It is,” Gray’s voice came slow and seriously. “The most important thing in the world to me: Doc, I finally found a woman I want to marry. I love her more than I thought possible. It’s not just jealousy of Royal—did you ever see the like to that?” he asked, diverted. Then he said more soberly, “Though I fooled myself into thinking that for a spell, and I regret it, because it delayed things. No, I love her, no question about it. She’s the only one for me. But there’s a problem…”
It didn’t take long to tell, because he hadn’t many facts, only those she’d told him, and he repeated those as he’d heard them. When he was done, the doctor was silent, rocking back and forth, fingering his chin as he thought, and Gray added in a goaded voice, “Now, if I try to seduce her to find out and I succeed, I lose either way it turns out. If there’s something terribly wrong. I’ll destroy her sure as if I used a knife, and I don’t think a man should use his sex as a weapon. But if there’s nothing much wrong, I’ll have lost her love and her trust. She’ll always think I had to try her out first, before I gave my word to love her forever—andwho could blame her? She’d be right. That’s no way to begin a marriage, is it? That’s not love, that’s a business deal. But just what in hell am I supposed to do? What do you think it could be, Doc?”
“Could be anything, could be nothing,” the doctor said musingly. “She ever say her folks mentioned anything to her about herself before she got married?”
Gray shook his head.
“And they’re actors?” the doctor asked, and then said slowly, “Well, then we got to figure she’s right about that—there’s nothing to be seen on the outside, because though I know some folks who’d keep a daughter born with a pecker growing out of her ear a secret for fifty years, you can bet an actor wouldn’t keep his mouth shut about something to do with sex.”
He rocked for while longer, before he started chuckling at a thought, and then waved his hand as though to wave it away, as he said, “She’s something, I can tell you. Imagine, having the brass to pick up a mirror to have a look! Not that it told her anything. And that damned fool husband didn’t either…she ever say he took any medicine?”
“Not that I know of…Wait!” Gray said, remembering. “Yeah. She said that when she helped him pack, she threw in his bottles of ‘Peruvian’ something, and ‘Dr. Pierce’s Golden something,’ or the other way ‘round—I wasn’t listening that close. Is it important?”
“Could be,” the doctor rocked a little faster, before he stopped and stared at Gray, “?‘Peruvian Elixer’ is a nice-Nelly name for what’s supposed to be a sure cure for what they call ‘men’s weakness’ and I call impotence. So’s ‘Golden Syrup’— but all it tells us is that the man couldn’t make it, and we know that already. But was it because of him—or her?”
“She said he fathered a child after he left her…” Gray began, but the doctor interrupted, “Don’t mean nothing. Man can perform like a studhorse with one woman and shrink up like a snail on hot rock at the sight of another. Listen, Gray. Here it is, plain as I can see it without seeing your girl, in order of difficulty—for you and her:
“She could have something really wrong, since birth. Something we can’t fix. Or she might have something called ‘imperforate hymen,’ which is only that it’s a damned tough one, and needs a scalpel to open it, because no man’s that strong.That only means you have to get her to a comfortable sort of doctor with a sharp knife, and there’s an end to it. Or it could be that her damned fool of a husband got himself soused on his wedding night—three drinks at least, I figure from what you said she said, and she was so scared she shut up like a clam, so he couldn’t do a thing. And being scared of not being able, kept him disabled from then on—it happens. That only means she needs a few drinks herself so as to loosen up, and a strong sober man next time.
“It isn’t an answer,” the doctor apologized. “It’s three of them. But for damned sure, bet on it, it’s one of them that’s the problem.”
“And for your money?” Gray asked.
“Can’t say. Wouldn’t be fair.”
They sat in silence for a time. Then the doctor spoke again.
“Tell you something,” he said thoughtfully. “I haven’t thought on it before, but from what I can see, we got more cases of imperforate hymen these days than when I was young—or when the world was young, for that matter. A whole lot more, it’s a regular epidemic, if I’m reading my journals right. And that’s odd. See, it happens once in a million or two, but I been hearing about it once in a thousand or two lately. I’m wondering if it isn’t just because they’re bringing up girls ignorant of what they used to know, and misleading boys, too.
“Hell, you’ve been East,” the doctor growled. “You hear how they talk and act. Buttoned, girdled, and laced up to the nose—and die brains—all of them. Read one of Ida’s romantic novels the other day—they have a married woman finding a baby that ‘must have fallen out of heaven onto her breast in the night.’ Imagine! That’s how they talk about having babies! Tell that to one of my poor girls shouting her head off long into the night later tonight, and she’ll tell you a thing or two. “…Falling out of heaven!” Damnation. They’re calling piano legs ‘limbs,’ and even keeping books written by men on separate shelves from those written by women. I swear it! Saw it recommended in one of Ida’s ladies’ magazines not two months ago.”
They laughed before he went on, “But it got me to thinking. Now, a scared woman’s harder to get into than a locked safe. You wouldn’t believe all the muscles involved, and if they seize up…man with rape on his mind’s got to cut off her wind, smack her silly, or threaten her bad to get to her, and that’s the truth. Ahusband’s not likely to do that on his wedding night—I hope. All the proper young gals these days, they have got to be scared blue. They don’t know what they’re going to be seeing, doing, or feeling—except bad and guilty. Must be as hard getting them to lay down on a bed as on an operating table, at that. The men are just as bad. Half the medical books claim good women don’t feel anything but duty. Hah! They should get a look at some real folks like I do. The only difference between a good girl and bad one is a wedding ring. But that’s a considerable thing, and maybe it ought to be,” he mused.
“Point is,” he said abruptly, because Gray was sitting forward, listening intently, “we didn’t need doctors to initiate so many wives once upon a time. When they knew what to expect and their husbands expected it of them, too, even the tough ones gave in, if you know what I mean. One in a million in olden days, and now there’s a regular epidemic of them, well, what do you think?” he snorted.
Gray sat quietly. And then he rose.
“I think,” he said, “that it’s time for me to get going. Thanks, Doc.”
The doctor arose, too, and asked, “But I didn’t give you a good answer, so what are you going to do, boy?”
Gray smiled at him, and it was such a sweet smile that the doctor literally saw the boy again in the toughened, scarred man before him.
“I’m going back, and I’m going to marry her, if I can,” Gray said.
“Now hold on, Gray,” the doctor said worriedly, stepping into his path. “Damn if you weren’t always such a rash boy. Was you listening? I never said it was something correctable. It could be—but it could be something really bad, too.”
“I know,” Gray said calmly. “But it doesn’t matter. That’s the point. I came to you for medical advice, and I got it. I was listening, but I was listening to something else, too. Something inside of me that knew the answer from the first. My problem’s got more to do with the heart and soul than the regions we were talking about. Of course I know it’s a physical problem, too, and there are no guarantees. It could be bad, real bad. But I think the truth is that the worst it could be, would be having to go through life without her by my side.”
